I ran into an issue while changing a database schema around. Some queries still worked, even though I didn't expect them to.
Can anyone explain to me why the following is valid (running 9.6) ? schema CREATE TEMPORARY TABLE example_a__data ( foo_id INT, bar_id INT ); CREATE TEMPORARY TABLE example_a__rollup_source ( id int primary key, name varchar(64), foo_id INT, check_bool BOOLEAN ); CREATE TEMPORARY TABLE example_a__rollup AS SELECT id, name, foo_id FROM example_a__rollup_source WHERE check_bool IS TRUE ; query: SELECT foo_id FROM example_a__data WHERE foo_id IN (SELECT bar_id FROM example_a__rollup) ; a raw select of `SELECT bar_id FROM example_a__rollup;` will cause an error because bar_id doesn't exist postgres doesn't raise an error because example_a__data does have a bar_id -- but example_a__rollup doesn't and there's no explicit correlation in the query. can someone explain why this happens? i'm guessing there is a good reason -- but I'm unfamiliar with the type of implicit join/queries this behavior is enabling.